Buffalo Grain Elevators & the American Dream
It was a brisk February morning as I climbed a tall extension ladder that was leaning against a grain barrage at the General Mills elevator on the Buffalo River. Setting foot on the boat’s steel decking, I was instantly drawn to the din that was coming from a large rectangular opening in the ship’s hold. As I made my way over to the cavity I was engulfed in a cloud of fine brownish dust arising from below that met the falling snowflakes from the flat bluegray sky. This swirling combination of moist colored particles made it appear to be snowing both up and down as it covered my cameras and me. As I peered down into this foggy scene, it seemed as though I was time traveling back into our early industrial past. Looking down I saw small groups of men manually directing an intriguingly complex system of ropes and pulleys, powered by big heavy metal gears in the elevator, to guide two giant shovels back and forth across the ship’s belly, pushing the grain towards a device that carried it up into the elevator.
One of the men invited me up into the elevator to photograph. It was cold, damp, and dim as we climbed an ancient, open, circular metal staircase. I tried not to look down. Everything inside this working nineteenth century ruin was covered in pigeon droppings. The noise from gears propelling the grain skyward did not lend itself to conversation, which was just as well since I was already coughing from the omnipresent sea of grain dust. Up in the elevator operations booth there was a window opening containing a thick Plexiglas box in which I was able to insert my upper torso and gaze directly downward, obtaining a bird’s eye view on this the official last day of this physical operation.
This pre-electronic ritual can be traced back to 1842 when Joseph Dart built the first grain elevator at the foot of Commercial Street on the Buffalo Creek in Buffalo, NY. Dart devised a system to unload grain from ships and store it in his “elevator” by utilizing an endless belt of buckets. Dart’s operation substituted modern ingenuity for the “backs of Irishmen,” who did 90 percent of this dangerous and heavy labor. By 1864, a large metal scoop was run in the ship’s hold by men called “grain scoopers”, which reduced the costs of delivering wheat from Midwestern farms to eastern markets. The scoopers were low paid manual laborers who unionized at the end of the nineteenth century to improve their working conditions and wages. In addition, it enabled them to pass this job on within their families for the next 100 years despite technological innovations and competition from trains and the St. Lawrence Seaway.
Back on the ship’s deck, which is owned by George Steinbrenner who also owes the New York Yankees, a sense of sadness and melancholy was mixed in with the final action. I spoke with one of the older scoopers who told me they all knew it was inevitable that these now part-time jobs would disappear in favor of more economical technology. Besides the money, he said what he would miss the most was the camaraderie that develops from the reliance and trust of working a risky job with other men. As we talked the holds were gradually emptied, the grain dust settled, and the snow fell silently on the still deck.
In the course of the day I encountered Mark Maio, a former Buffalonian who has been photographing and researching the scoopers for the past 15 years, and asked him what he has learned from these men. Maio observed that “Many people might be familiar with a particular segment of this process, but don’t know what goes on before or after that portion except that they have bread or cereal on their table.” Maio’s project, Against the Grain: An American Story, connects the dots by following the grain’s journey from Kansas to Duluth to Buffalo. Maio has also traveled on the new selfunloading barrages, which are too big for the Buffalo River, that go down the Mississippi River to New Orleans where automated unloading operations requires only two men.
Maio expressed four overarching ideas embedded in the history of the Buffalo scoopers: the rise of labor unions; the American immigrant experience; changing technology; and the affect of geography on the destiny of a city.
Maio’s project examines the key underpinning of the scoopers’ success and failure, the strength of union solidarity that reflected nineteenth century progressive socialistic values. The union organized men into “gangs” and everyone received the same pay, which was determined by the amount of grain they moved and not the time it took to do it. The gangs were given equal amounts of work and any man not able to work for legitimate reasons was paid. The union’s strength kept the scoopers scooping, but the system was doomed, as it could not adapt to technological change.
Maio relates how the scoopers’ tale preserves one of the many stories about the immigrant spirit, a belief that through hard work and sacrifice it was possible to re-invent yourself, start a new life, and better your situation.
In terms of geography, Buffalo greatly benefited from the Erie Canal, but in the mid-twentieth century the St. Lawrence Seaway, originally applauded as a boom to Buffalo, enabled shippers to bypass the city. The story is similar to that of Buffalo’s steel industry and shows what happens to people and their cities when their leaders try to freeze time, become entrenched in the status quo, and fail to seek new opportunities.
Back in the ship’s galley there was talk of purchasing one of these old grain boats and converting it into a museum to commemorate the scoopers. But as I walked back to my truck along the decaying, ice clogged dock my thoughts were not of the past but of the future.What economic opportunities will there be for scoopers children? Having a future involves incorporating your past, but not being a prisoner of it. This ability to transcend and transform the self is the dynamic element that makes up the mythic ideals of American Exceptionalism and forged the American Dream. With this in mind, a fitting legacy would embrace innovative ideas that would bring new living wage jobs and assist Buffalo to once again be a place of opportunity.
Mark Maio’s Against the Grain:An American Story has been nationally exhibited and he would like to see it come to WNY and be published as a book.
